Racing: Making Sacrifices

To reach your competitive potential, you have to make choices. The best runners in the world select their races carefully with an eye toward peaking in one or two events each year. They also tend to do best when they focus on a particular genre and/or distance.

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Lornah Kiplagat decided to focus her effort after two years spent trying to succeed in track, roads, and cross country, at a variety of distances. Though she’d won some important road races and placed well in others—notably the 2003 World Championships 10,000m, the 2004 Olympic 10,000m, and the 2004 ING New York City Marathon—she’d become frustrated and exhausted. "2003 and 2004 were tough, with the intense training for track, road and marathon, and injuries followed," says Kiplagat’s coach and husband, Pieter Langerhorst.

Kiplagat began 2005 with several road race victories. She also found that staying away from tough track training brought a lessening of the injuries that had plagued her steadily for two years. "She decided to focus on the road," says Langerhorst.

In May, Kiplagat made the decision to forego the outdoor track season. Instead, she would race exclusively on the roads, culminating at the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships in October and the ING New York City Marathon in November.

The strategy began to pay dividends immediately. "After running several road races this year, it was clear that Lornah feels better on the road," said Langerhorst. Kiplagat also began to win big: As of mid-August, she had garnered 10 victories in 10 road races.

Kiplagat observes that many competitive runners at all levels feel pressure to race in a variety of genres. To be the very best, however, she says runners must resist that pressure. "Most track stars don’t run on the roads," she says. "It’s too much. They don’t expect Lance Armstrong to do the Tour de France, the World Championships, mountain biking, and track. In running they want you to do it all, but if you want to win, you’d better focus."

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Focusing on—and winning—road races hasn’t felt like a sacrifice to Kiplagat. "I have no regrets at all that I skipped Helsinki," she says, on having missed the World Track Championships. "For the first time in a long time I have been able to train without pain. And it’s been fun to focus on the road."

In addition to the victories and the freedom from injuries, Kiplagat says she is rewarded in a more important way—personal fulfillment. "My advice is that you need to have fun in anything you do—including running," she says. "If you feel great on the track, you run track. If you feel great on the long distance, you run half marathons or marathons. You just need to have fun in what you do."

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